Aerial view of Western Australia's red-earth country meeting a turquoise coastline
Year 7 · Unit 01 · Lesson 02

Mapping the Endowment

One idea must land: WA's resources are real places — mostly remote ones — and a good map shows patterns a list can't.

Lesson 1 taught them what the ground offers. Today they find out where — and discover almost none of it is anywhere near Perth. Students become exploration briefers building the map a newcomer company would pay real money for.

Spark

X marks the spot

A blank WA outline, zero information. Every student marks an X where instinct says the iron ore is — plus a one-line defence, locked in before anyone learns anything. Then the reveal: the Pilbara, far north-west. Quick hands: who was hot, warm, or a very long drive away?

The wrongness is the hook — almost nobody guesses how far north it is. Let them feel it before you explain it.
Core

Six regions, six specialities

Brief each region as a character while students fill their intel table: the Pilbara — iron ore country, the state’s engine. The Goldfields — gold around Kalgoorlie, nickel at Kambalda. The South West — Greenbushes, one of the world’s great lithium mines. The Darling Range — bauxite an hour from Perth. The North West Shelf — gas, offshore, shipped as LNG.

Link back hard to Lesson 1: every one classifies as non-renewable. Ask it straight: “why is this map, in a sense, a map of things that don’t come back?” Then teach BOLTSS fast and concretely — it’s the difference between a drawing and a map.
Workshop

The briefing map

On the base-map printable: plot each region with its own symbol, build the legend, complete every BOLTSS convention — then write one insight annotation: a pattern, not a fact. Close with the sign-off checklist: a professional never hands over an unchecked map.

The pattern you’re fishing for: almost everything is remote. Distance from Perth is the quiet seed for Unit 4’s FIFO lesson — plant it, don’t harvest it.
Land it

Exit ticket — map closed, memory open

Maps away. Two region→resource pairs from memory, the distance sentence, and one forward question: “if I had to work in one of those regions next year, the first question I’d ask is…” If “far from Perth” or “remote” appears unprompted, the lesson landed.

Teacher intel

What’s the furthest region from Perth — and how would a worker get there on a Monday? (Unit 4 seed.)
Which of your regions could run out one day — and which never will? (Lesson 1’s test, applied to place.)
What’s missing from your map that every one of these regions needs? (Water — next lesson’s door, opened by them.)
Watch for“The mines are near Perth” (almost none are) · “resources are spread evenly” (geology clusters them) · “offshore isn’t WA” (the Shelf is one of the state’s biggest earners).
Running shortDrop the insight annotation — protect the plot-and-legend core and the exit ticket.
SupportSymbol bank + two regions pre-labelled as anchors.
ExtendAdd a water overlay: where are the rivers and dry country relative to the resources — and what problem does that geometry create? They’ll walk into Lesson 3 having already asked its question.